Monday, March 23, 2009

Madness Monday: Martin Slattery


(Thanks to footnoteMaven for this great poster!)

This is my first Madness Monday post - and I think it is a great idea dreamed up by Amy Crooks of Untangled Family Roots.

I spent much of yesterday working on my Slattery line and am pulling what little hair I have left out trying to locate Martin Slattery, my 2nd great-grandfather.

Here is the problem: I have an obituary for my great-grandfather, John Vincent Slattery, from the Kingston Daily Freeman published on July 11, 1939. The obituary lists his parents as Martin Slattery and Margaret Leehive. However it is the unavailable 1890 US Federal Census and the fact that Martin Slattery and Margaret Leehive most likely died prior to the 1900 census which cause my madness.

In the 1900 US Federal Census, the children of Martin Slattery are living with their uncle - Margaret's brother - Michael Leehive. This continues over the next few census reports (1910 and 1920) with no trace of either Martin Slattery or Margaret Leehive.

Given the fact that Slattery is a rather common surname among the Irish, I will work on Leehive information. What I know so far is that Leehive (and its variants Lehive and Leahive) is an English surname which I hope will give me more information on my Slattery line.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had a similar problem from 1846. My 4g-grandfather died, his daughter died, and it appeared that his son-in-law died. My 90-year old uncle told me that it was from milk sickness (from livestock eating snake root). The 1840 census showed them all, and the 1850 census showed 4g-grandmother, the orphaned child, and two unmarried daughters in the household. At first I thought it was three deaths, because the child was with the women until he married, and the sisters stayed with his family until their deaths. While researching the orphan, I found the father alive and well, and his family unaware of his child (their records only show his first wife's first name).

Now I really wonder about the deaths.

JamaGenie said...

Tom, you don't say where they were living before 1900. Not in a state that did what I call 5-year censuses (1885, 1895, etc)?

Anonymous said...

Thomas,

There's a Martin & Margaret in the 1880 census in Iowa. You didn't give enough info to tell if that's them or not, but you may want to check it out. The 1880 also has a Martin & Mary in NY state.

Donna